1) "There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having
been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this
planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple
a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are
being, evolved." (Charles Darwin)

16) Those who are spiritually healthy, yet become ascetics, will become
morally ill.

- also - The Torah tells us to follow the path of moderation. . . not to dwell in
the wilderness, nor in the mountains, nor to don hair garments, nor to afflict
the body. (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Deut 3:1)

Life is not a waif, orphan or immigrant, but a true native of Earth. Life was
born here almost as soon as Earth itself had settled into a semblance of calm.
Primordial life and young Earth evolved side by side, and each changed the
other. Very early, life molded the atmosphere of Earth by releasing Oxygen, as
powerfully as the hands of a potter shape the clay on a wheel. Life made the air
breathable (for some), the land livable and if we deny life, and turn our backs away
from assuming our duty based on our peculiar talents, we turn away from the role
on Earth appropriate to ourselves as members of our species.

17) Now oxygen -- though not many people realize it -- is not only explosive
but is also a deadly poison. It is highly reactive and can burn living tissues almost
as readily as it rusts iron. There was virtually no oxygen loose in Earth's
early atmosphere. It was released by cyanobacteria beginning 2.6 billion years
ago (or so). Excess oxygen would have destroyed amino acids and dismantled
organic molecules as fast as they formed. Initially oxygen was absorbed by iron,
to form ferric oxide and precipitated to the floor of the oceans. Banded iron
formations supply North America with vast amounts of iron ore (used to make
steel). This is indirect evidence that life and photosynthesis existed earlier
than Awramik's cells at Warrawoona, 3.8 billion years ago.

Somewhere a few cynobacteria cells combined with enzymes (Amino acids string
together to make proteins, including those called enzymes) that could seize the
dangerous compounds formed by oxygen and organic molecules and turn these into
benign compounds (something like fermentation and ensiling). (see verse 8 above)
After 500 million years of oxygen pollution some cells went a step further and
found a way to get energy from oxygen in the process known as respiration. These
cells were literally playing with fire, but succeeded.

18) The human eye is one of many marvelous organs that have been inherited
from the animal kingdom. The shameful thing is that we didn't get a better one.
There are many animals that see far better than humans, so if there were an
intelligent god determining the construction of man (see Argument by Design,
Undecimus Stele: Atheism, verse 24) why didn't we get better eyes? (Knock on
wood. . . Who's complaining?)

Of course man eventually, with his superior gift of invention, developed
spectacles, the telescope and the microscope (and many gods) to make up for his
'God-given' inadequacies.

19) The Hubble telescope has been a marvelous instrument to advance our
vision into heaven, but like the Tower of Babylon designed to put us closer to
god, it hasn't put us closer to anything (to say the adverse, it has put us
closer to nothing). ". . .This is just the beginning of what they are going to
do." (Good New Bible, Genesis 11: 6)

In June 2001, the Hubble telescope was scheduled to receive a new camera 10
times more powerful than the original. In July of 2003, the Hubble telescope will
receive up-dated electronics and a new spectrograph for analyzing chemical
components with 10 to 15 times the sensitivity of the original. We can't
expect to have eyes that could do all of this, but what about that eagle? Why
couldn't we have had eyes at least that good?

One tool discovered is an eight inch long, rock hand knife that shows flaking
along the edges. (This is almost identical to a slightly shorter rock knife
Susie Jacob found near our home at the edge of our pond. Both knives were
clearly transported to their respective locations.)

In China there was a meteorite impact that burned surrounding forests and
generated a molten rock shower that solidified into glassy objects called
tektites. Argon isotope techniques dated the tektites found in the same geologic
layer as the tools. In the case of the discovery in Oregon, there is no official
dating but was probably manufactured and used less than 1,000 years ago. The
immediate area was a harvest area for Camas Lily root (and is still a seasonal
home for beaver) -- a large rock mortar (probably used for making a flour from
dry Camas roots) was found nearby as well. One is forced to ask the question:
"How much did we learn in 803,000 years?"

21)

AUTUMN

With what glory comes and goes the year!
The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers
Of Sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy
Life's newness, and earth's garniture spread out;
And when the silver habit of the clouds
Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with
A sober gladness the old year takes up
His bright inheritance of golden fruits,
A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.
There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,
And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life
Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned,
And sliver beech, and maple yellow-leaved,
Where autumn, like a faint old man, sits downBy the wayside a-weary. Through the trees
The golden robin moves. The purple finch,
That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds,
A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle,
And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud,
From cottage roofs the warbling bluebird sings,
And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke,
Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.
O what a glory doth this world put on
From him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings;
He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long resting-place without a tear.
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1826; age, 19)

22) "When the customary time for the practice of meditation had passed,
Govinda rose. It was now evening. It was time to perform the evening ablutions.
He called Siddhartha by his name; he did not reply. Siddhartha sat absorbed, his
eyes staring as if directed at a distant goal, the tip of his tongue showing a
little between his teeth. He did not seem to be breathing. He sat thus, lost in
meditation, thinking "Om, his soul as the arrow directed at Brahman..."

"...And Siddhartha said softly, as if speaking to himself: What is
meditation? What is abandonment of the body? What is fasting? What is the
holding of breath? It is a flight from the Self, it is a temporary escape from
the torment of Self. It is a temporary palliative against the pain and folly
of life. The driver of oxen makes this same flight, takes this temporary
drug when he drinks a few bowls of rice wine or coconut milk in the inn. He then
no longer feels his Self, no longer feels the pain of life; he then experiences
temporary escape. Falling asleep over his bowl of rice wine, he finds what
Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape from their bodies by long exercises
and dwell in the non-Self." (Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, 1957)

How much better is it to find the key to relaxation and pleasure by natural
means, such as playing games with, and speaking softly and kindly to the ones
you love?

23) "Suddenly I became aware that an adenine-thymine pair held together by
two hydrogen bonds was identical in shape to a quanine-cytosine pair held
together by at least two hydrogen bonds. All the hydrogen bonds seemed to form
naturally; no fudging was required to make the two types of base pairs identical
in shape. Quickly I called Jerry over to ask him whether this time he had any
objection to my new base pairs. . . Chargaff's rules then suddely stood out as a
consequence of a double-helical structure for DNA. Even more exciting, this type
of double helix suggested a replication scheme much more satisfactory than my
briefly considered like-with-like pairing. . . I felt slightly queasy when at lunch
Francis singed into the Eagle to tell everyone within hearing distance that we
had found the secret of life." (The Double Helix, James D. Watson, 1968)
50 years after this discovery, the entire field of biology has changed
dramatically as was the predicted consequence.

24) "There have been other species of Homo who were not so smart,
ancestors now extinct. Homo sapiens began to emerge a hundred thousand --
perhaps two or three hundred thousand -- years ago, depending on how one regards
Neanderthal Man (approximately 75,000 years old). He was another Homo.
Some think he was the same species as ourselves, others think he was an
ancestor. There are a few who consider him a kind of cousin. That matter is
unsettled because many of the best Neanderthal fossils were collected in Europe
before anybody knew how to excavate sites properly or get good dates.
Consequently, we do not have exact ages for most of the Neanderthal fossils in
collections. . ."

"Neanderthal Man had ancestors, human ones. Before him in time was a less
advanced type: Homo erectus. Put him on the subway and people would
probably take a suspicious look at him. Before Homo erectus was a really
primitive type, Homo habilis; put him on the subway and people would
probably move to the other end of the car. Before Homo habilis the human
line may run out entirely. The next stop in the past, back of Homo
habilis, might be something like Lucy. . ."

"Lucy is approximately 3.5 million years old. She is the oldest, most
complete, best-preserved skeleton of any erect walking human ancestor that has
ever been found." (Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey, Lucy,
1981)

25) "For one thing is needful: that a human being attain his satisfaction
with himself -- whether it be by this or by that poetry and art; only then
is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with
himself is always ready to revenge himself therefor; we others will be his
victims, if only by always having to stand his ugly sight. For the sight of the
ugly makes men bad and gloomy." (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science,
290, 1882)

26) In the year 1984, there were 4.6 billion human beings on Earth -- one of
us for each time our planet had gone around Sun. It is as hard to conceive such
a number as it is to apprehend the great age of Earth. Ten thousand years ago
there were only about 5 million people living.

In 1850, there were 1 billion people, in 1950 there were 2.5 billion. By 2020
there is expected to be at least 7.5 billion human beings alive on Earth. No
other living thing, so far as we know, is aware of itself and questions its own
existence. If Gaia is Earth come alive, we are
Gaia come awake (since we are made of and by Earth).

27) What constitutes a species? Ernst Mayr stated: "a species is a group of
interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other
such groups." (Example: Horse and donkey have become reproductively isolated;
their mating cannot produce fertile offspring.) "It took a long time for
anthropologists to get it through their own skulls that populations are
extremely variable. Therefore one has to have a big sample - men, women and
children - before one can begin to recognize the features that are common to them
all. . . also a sense of [their] variability. . . Peking Man made such an approach
possible. . . All of them have been given the name Homo erectus
(erect-walking man). . . would have been devastating at lacrosse or hockey, two of
the most physical sports now played by medium-sized Men. . . escalation from
erectus to sapiens is now believed to have taken place between
four hundred thousand and one hundred thousand years ago."

"I think that one of the most difficult things for people to accept about the
Java ape-man was how old he was. He was at least five hundred thousand years
old. That makes him five times the age of the Neanderthals everyone was having
such a hard time digesting. Now consider Lucy. She is six times as old. . . What
filled that enormous gap? . . two or three kinds of
Australopithecus. . . early hominids that were not Men."

"Paleo-anthropology is like a jigsaw puzzle, but without having all the
pieces at once. There appears to be four groupings of ancestors to Man:
Australopithecus gracile and robustus; Homo habilis at
about 1.85 million years ago and Homo erectus beginning from about 1.1
million years ago." (Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey, Lucy,
1981)

28) Analysis of horse teeth from the Ukraine proves that riding horses began
6,000 years ago, much earlier than had been supposed. This innovation
gradually made the world smaller to enhance trade and communication, made it
possible for armies to move faster and farther and for young men to better woo
their dear-hearts.

The epochal relation between horse and rider originated in a Copper Age
society known as the Sredni Stog culture, which flourished in the Ukraine 6,000
years ago. Riding predates the wheel, making it the first significant innovation
in human land transport. Like the Bison of North America, the horse was the
primary, surviving large grazing animal of the steppes of eastern Europe.

Horse-drawn chariots reached the Middle East by 1,800 BC, some 2,000 years
after riding began. The excitement of driving a well tuned machine has not
deminished since that early day.

29) Since January 1983, a satellite has been circling Earth and scanning
Universe. IRAS (Infrared Astronomy Satellite) owned by the USA, Great Britain
and The Netherlands, monitors the infrared band -- the kind of energy emitted by
cooler dust, smoke and rock, not stars. In the first phase of its work it
examined 100 stars and found 20% of these to be surrounded by a disc of dark
material (nebula). These stars have envelopes of whirling matter being warmed by
their stars and this gives off infrared energy, as does Earth.

These "envelopes" must be similar to what our own solar system was like when
it began to form, some 6 billion miles wide, and about 4.5 - 5 billion years
ago. With 100 billion stars in Milky Way and 100 billion galaxies in the know
Universe, what are the chances that life exists elsewhere? Almost certainty; but did
Man evolve as on Earth? much less likely.

Hubble telescope has sent pictures and information about the Veil nebula.
Comparing this new data to the photos taken in 1953, a new date for its demise
and distance have been calculated: 1,500 light years away (compared to 2,500),
and 5,000 years old (compared to 18,000 formerly). This was the end of a star,
of course, (and maybe life there) and presages the destiny of our solar system
in some 4 - 5 billion years. Now we know better how supernovas 'seed' interstellar
space with elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen -- all essential
chemicals for the development of life as we know it.

30) Can we live here for 4 billion+ years? Daniel Simberloff, an ecologist at
Florida State University, estimates that sometime in the 21st century we will
have so reduced the area of the tropical rain forests that we will lose 66% of
their plant species and 69% of their bird species. "...the catastrophe we are
facing is not the worst biological debacle since life began -- the late Permian
extinction must be that -- but it certainly vies
for second place." We may be on the verge (indeed, we've already begun to take part in one) of the greatest dying times in 245 million
years, an event worse than the one that took the dinosaurs 65 million years ago but, this time, caused by terrestrial activity--human activity.

Since so much of the life in tropical forests is still unknown, untold
genetic wealth can be destroyed forever in the clearing of a single farm.
Tropical biologists feel it is like the legendary library of Alexander, Egypt. A
million scrolls of papyrus, original manuscripts, the works of genius were lost
when a mob burned it to the ground. The number of unknown tropical organisms --
80% have not been seen by any professional student -- amounts to a staggering
total of some 2.5 million species, about twice as many as all species that have
been described -- alive and extinct -- during the last 245 million years.
Wow!

31) Nuclear Winter is not a mere rhetorical argument against the
proliferation of nuclear arms by super-powers. This is the cap-stone of man's
inhumanity to man and threatens to undue the results of the entire process of
evolution responsible for the development of Homo sapiens. In spite of
the Soviet 'defeat' in the cold war, there are huge arsenals of nuclear weapons
pointed at targets, stored in silos, and ready to be fired by many nations. It took
from 1945 to 1983 to understand the consequences of a nuclear war, in addition
to the trivial (by comparison) damage from the impact of the weapons and
resulting radiation effects. The TTAPS report (named for the scientists - Turco,
Toon, Pollack, Ackerman and Carl Sagan) was published and made public October
31, 1983, giving a vivid account of the consequences and absurdity of a nuclear
war.

In 1971, Mariner 9 was witness to a massive dust storm across the planet
Mars. The effects of this storm were measured by an infrared interferometric
spectrometer and showed the dramatic cooling effect on the surface. This
information was extended to Earth by computer simulations and, combined with
other data, proved that a nuclear conflict would generate enough dust, smoke and
chemical pollutants to create a Nuclear Winter around Earth. If it takes
another 40 years to eliminate nuclear weapons, that will be an important stage
in human development. It has been suggested that such dramatic climate
change caused naturally by volcanoes is the cause of epidemics of plague. (see
Vicesimus Tres Stele: Medicine, verse 23)

32) Dust entered the stratosphere during April 1815 when Mount Tambora, in
the Indonesian archipelago, erupted. In New England, USA, the four seasons that
followed have been remembered ever since as "the year without a summer."

The old Norse vision of the Twilight of the Gods gives a picture of this. The
gods battle against Loki and the powers of evil, and both sides lose:

The sun will go black
Earth sink in the sea
heaven be stripped of its bright stars;
smoke rage and fire,
leaping the flame
lick heaven itself.

Then according to the Norse tale comes:

Fimbul Winter -
Heavy snows are driven and fall from the world's four corners;
the murder frost prevails.
The Sun is darkened at noon;
it sheds no gladness;
devouring tempests bellow and never end.
In vain do men await the coming of summer.
Thrice winter follows winter over a world which is
snow-smitten, frost-fettered, and chained in ice.

33) Consider that the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere are
four systems that have a harmonious balance. "A complex system that can be seen
as a single organism and that has the capacity to keep our planet a fit place
for life. Earth is homeostatic, and must be capable of effective checks and
balances. For example, Sun has not been a steady heat lamp. It probably settled
down after its initial surge to one third as strong as it is today. Then it
increased slowly to its present strength. Yet in all that time Earth has not
overheated. Somehow it has remained at the optimum temperature for life. Too
much has gone right for us, for too long, to call it luck. " (James Lovelock,
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, 1979)

The Greek poet Hesiod wrote:

Earth, the beautiful, rose up,
Broad-bosomed, she that is the steadfast base
Of all things. And fair Earth first bore
The starry Heaven, equal to herself,
To cover her on all sides and to be
A home forever to the blessed gods.

This is called the sin of anthropomorphism -- reading human emotions into
rocks, streams, winds and trees and inventing man-like gods. Nature is not a
planner. Nature is what happens -- ontological. It is Man (and natural catastrophes) that
can change this.

34) What was the birthday of Homo sapiens? Our final development
occurred between 130,000 and 10,000 years ago, depending on your definition.
During that rather short period, during the last phase of the Ice Age, humans
invented new tools, found the meaning of life in ritual and became artists. The
great artistic achievements such as the "gallery of bison" at Altamira Cave,
Spain, clearly distinguish between humans and Homo erectus, our most
immediate predecessor. There are some 300 decorated Ice Age sites in Europe
alone dating between 17,000 and 10,000 years old. Other cave art dates to 32,000
years ago in France's Chauvet Cave.

Between 28,000 and 24,000 years ago the Pavlov Hills, in what is now the
Czech Republic, supported many seasonal, pre-historic camps. The earliest known
ceramics and textiles date to this site. As Glaciers approached their maximum
extent 20,000 years ago, the people of Dolni Vestonice (Czech) were forced to
leave the area and left behind such momentos as clay figurines, unmistakably
female.

Between 100,000 and 70,000 years ago people resembling humans developed
sophisticated tools using bones at Blombos Cave, South Africa. They manufactured
perfectly shaped spear points, unexcelled until 22,000 years ago in Europe.

The ancestors of the Aborigines of Australia probably arrived around 62,000
years ago from Indonesia aboard rafts. A huge mammal, the diprotodon,
became extinct around 30,000 years ago along with a third of the Australia's
other mammal species, possibly due to over-hunting.

35) One of the most remarkable fossil animals discovered in South America is
Megatherium, a giant ground sloth. It stood six meters (19 ft) high,
weighed more than an elephant, and was probably brought to extinction by man. It
browsed off treetops of the rain forests, no doubt. The bones of this animal
were observed by Darwin in the 1830s. Some postulate that this is related to
the mythical 'Sasquach' of the Pacific Northwest.

36) "The Laetoli-Hadar [Africa] specimens represent a common ancestor
[Australopithecus afarensis] to the later australopithecines and to
Homo; the divergence between the latter two types probably began around
three million [years ago]; and the africanus represents an intermediate
stage on the way to robustus. We do not believe it was ancestral to
humans."

"We do believe that the emergence of human beings began sometime after three
million years ago. By two million it had been accomplished. By then creatures
recognizable as Homo walked on earth [Homo habilis]. So did their
cousins [Australopithecus robustus]. . . For about a million years they
appear to have walked side by side. By one million there were no
australopithecines left." Another extinct species.

How is it possible to explain the 'sudden' change from Homo habilis to
erectus? Was this a quick evolution simultaneous with new developments in
tools? Then why did the progress of man stagnate for about one million years
before? Then about 200,000 years ago ". . .humanity took another spurt. . . out of it
rose Homo sapiens. " (Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey, Lucy,
1981)

37) There is an on-going Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - SETI - a
modest 84 foot radio telescope at Harvard University equipped with receivers and
analyzers. Astronomers and physicists argue that extraterrestrial life is
abundant, and the opponents argue that while life may exist, the odds of there
being intelligence out there are so small that we are almost certainly alone in
our galaxy, and perhaps in the entire observable Universe. Receipt of a signal
would solve the riddle, while if we don't listen we shall have relinquished most
hope of solving it. We don't understand the origins of human intelligence, the
hypothesis that our brain was enlarged by evolution is inadequate to explain the
details. This intelligence is a gift, ". . .we fail to understand not only how or
why the gift was given us, but. . . why our brains equip us not only for domination
of our planet but also for a comprehension of the atoms' stuttering and the
galaxies' glide. Ignorant of our origins, we are orphans in our own world."
(Timothy Ferris, The Whole Shebang, 1997) Is this intelligence a link to
a fifth dimension?

38) We are so new at this whole language thing. ". . .extreme linguistic
differentiation takes time. Spoken language is in a sense always changing, since
each speaker of his tongue imprints on it his imperceptibly individual voice and
accent and choice or rejection of particular words and usage, but the changing
is as drops of water on the stone of fixed grammatical form. . . California's first
people so far as is presently known were Indians, ancestors of today's Indians
and in no significant way different from them. And they have been in California
a long time. . . The Yana [north central] have probably been in northern
California for three to four thousand years. . . as a minimum is a tentative,
conservative figure arrived at, surprisingly, by way of a recently accepted
branch of language study known as glottochronology. . . a study of the rate
at which the meaning of words changes, and the inferences to be drawn from such
changes. It began with analyses of old and documented languages such as
Sanskrit, Anglo-Saxon, or Chinese, comparing the old language in each case with
its living descendants, to find the rate of change from cognate to new terms of
the same basic meaning. Rates of change studied thus far vary little one from
another, and their average, used as the norm of change, is applied to
comparisons of pairs of other related languages to find the time which has
elapsed since their separation or first differentiation. A technique for
learning the history of a language thus becomes a technique also for learning
something of a people's political or cultural history." (Theodora Kroeber,
Ishi in two Worlds, 1961)

39) Civilized man is often contemptuous of the primitives and their cruel
puberty rites. The Luiseno bands of southern California practiced strenuous
rites to introduce young men into adulthood. The initiates drank a drug derived
from Jimsonweed to make them have visions. During several days of trials they
were subjected to tests of endurance: they had to ". . .lie motionless while being
bitten repeatedly by hordes of angry ants. [meditate on that!] As ordeal passed
to new ordeal throughout the ceremony, the candidate received long lectures on
proper conduct, on how to become a man of value, and on the religious practices
of his band. . . Australian aborigines known as Aranda are also organized as
patrilocal bands. . . puberty rites are much more elaborate, and they go on for
weeks instead of only for days. The initiate. . . is circumcised, lacerated, and
made to suffer terrible pain in many ways. . . known technically as subincision, is
the final step in his becoming a man in the Aranda band. . . The most sensible
explanation is. . . [these puberty rites] are mnemonic devices. . . an act is
unforgettable, then whatever is associated with that act is unforgettable
also. . . Associating information with trauma is an ancient technique in
education." [Some people have to learn the hard way.] (Peter Farb, Man's Rise
to Civilization, 1968) For those who think Adam being expelled from the
Garden of Eden was harsh, let them try this on for size.

40) Clearly Man has developed as a social animal. "The phenomenon of the
sealed-off community is a rare but recurrent one in human history. It may be
said categorically that it is doomed because of the nature of man, which is
social, intermingling, and generalized. A baby raised without hearing human
speech or experiencing normal emotional expression and exchange would probably
die early, and would in no case develop either speech or other distinctively
human and cultural attributes, [intelligence] these being matters which are
taught by example and transmitted through imitation and learning. Nor do adults
thrive in solitude -- we are not hibernating or singly-living animals. And since
we are as men the superficially variant members of a single species, an ingrown,
inward-looking, and too-specialized community begins to lose health and
adherents after a single generation, or goes to pieces through exacerbation
of tempers and temperaments which impinge too nearly and too exclusively one
upon another." (Theodora Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlds, 1961) That
brings back memories of my childhood when my sister and I used to argue.

41) In the 21st Century, The Theory of Evolution is still controversial. It
is a progression of ideas originating with Jean Baptiste de Lamarck and Count
Buffon, scientists of the Age of Enlightenment, and is still being perfected.
Baron Cuvier was a naturalist that was influential on the young Charles Darwin
as he began his famous voyage in HMS Beagle in 1831. Darwin made acute
observations and backed these with a strong imagination and problem solving
skill to reveal how creatures changed. Darwin was also influenced by Thomas
Malthus, the economist, who described the struggle for existence when
populations rise above their ability to produce (or find) food then decline by
starvation, disease, crime and war as a consequence of over population (sound
familiar?).

Darwin saw that this force of nature also explained (selection
pressure) the changes in populations of such animals as finches on the
Galapagos islands. As the original finches increased in numbers, there came a
shortage of food, those birds with beaks best fitted for available and diverse
food sources would predominate and thus pass on their specialized beaks. In time
new populations of finches with specialized beaks would arise creating the
diversity he observed. In 1857, Alfred Russel Wallace sent Darwin his essay
On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species, this at
last forced Darwin to publish his great work On the Origin of Species in
1859. The Law of Natural Selection is derived from these many efforts to put
the puzzle of nature together in an intelligible way.

42) Is Man too complex and diverse to undergo selection pressure today? Or is
our progress of a more spiritual nature? "A life which has no roots, which is
lacking in depth of background is a superficial one. There are some who assume
that when we see what is right we will do it. It is not so. Even when we know
what is right it does not follow that we will choose and do right. We are
overborne by powerful impulses and do wrong and betray the light in us. 'In our
present state we are, according to Hindu doctrine, only partly human; the lower
part of us is still animal; only the conquest of our lower instincts by love
can slay the animal in us.' It is by a process of trial and error,
self-search and austere discipline that the human being moves step by painful
step along the road to fulfillment." (S. Radhakrishnan, Introduction to All
Men Are Brothers, 1958)

43) "The bourgeoisie during its rule of scarce one hundred years [the
industrial revolution] has created more massive and more colossal productive
forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's
forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture,
steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents
for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the
ground -- what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive
forces slumbered in the lap of social labour? (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
Communist Manifesto, 1848) Man is on the move, but are we headed in the
right direction?